VegeDog: Formalism, vegetarian dogs, and partonomies in transition

The pragmatics of 'vegetarian' and 'carnivorous' exhibits an asymmetry that we put in evidence by analyzing a newspaper report about vegetarian dog-owners imposing a vegetarian diet on their pets. More fundamental is the problem of partonomy versus containment, for which we attempt a naive but formal analysis applied to ingestion and the food chain, an issue we derive from the same text analyzed. Our formal tools belong in commonsense modelling, a domain of artificial intelligence related to extra-linguistic knowledge and pragmatics. We first provide an interpretation of events analyzed, and express it graphically in a semantic-network related representation, and propose an alternative that we express in terms of a modal logic, avoiding the full representational power of Hayes's "ontology for liquids".

FUELGEN: effective evolutionary design of refuellings for pressurized water reactors

The paper describes the design of an efficient and robust genetic algorithm for the nuclear fuel loading problem (i.e., refuellings: the in-core fuel management problem) - a complex combinatorial, multimodal optimisation., Evolutionary computation as performed by FUELGEN replaces heuristic search of the kind performed by the FUELCON expert system (CAI 12/4), to solve the same problem. In contrast to the traditional genetic algorithm which makes strong requirements on the representation used and its parameter setting in order to be efficient, the results of recent research results on new, robust genetic algorithms show that representations unsuitable for the traditional genetic algorithm can still be used to good effect with little parameter adjustment. The representation presented here is a simple symbolic one with no linkage attributes, making the genetic algorithm particularly easy to apply to fuel loading problems with differing core structures and assembly inventories. A nonlinear fitness function has been constructed to direct the search efficiently in the presence of the many local optima that result from the constraint on solutions.

A case based reasoning system capturing fire modelling expertise

This paper describes the architecture of the case based reasoning (CBR) component of Smartfire, a fire field modelling tool for use by members of the Fire Safety Engineering community who are not expert in modelling techniques. The CBR system captures the qualitative reasoning of an experienced modeller in the assessment of room geometries so as to set up the important initial parameters of the problem. The system relies on two important reasoning principles obtained from the expert: 1) there is a natural hierarchical retrieval mechanism which may be employed; and 2) much of the reasoning on a qualitative level is linear in nature, although the computational solution of the problem is non-linear. The paper describes the qualitative representation of geometric room information on which the system is based, and the principles on which the CBR system operates.

Guest editorial. [Computers and Artificial Intelligence. 1998. Vol. 17, No. 2-3]

Editorial

The Daedalus system: A tool for the Italian investigating magistrate

Daedalus is a computer tool, developed by an Italian magistrate - Carmelo Asaro - and integrated in his own daily routine as an investigating magistrate conducting inquiries, then as a prosecutor if and when the case investigated goes to court. This tool has recently been adopted by magistrates in judiciary offices throughout Italy, spawning moreover other related projects. First, this paper describes a sample session with daedalus. Next, an overview of an array of judicial tools leads to positioning daedalus in the context of the spectrum.

An AI formalism for competing claims of identification: capturing the "Smemorato di Collegno" amnesia case

A formal representation is given of the situational structure, and the agents' beliefs about personal identity, in the Smemorato di Collegno amnesia case tried in 1927, in Pollenza, Italy. Another section discusses and formalizes a sample heuristic rule for conjecturing whether an individual identity other than personal, being conveyed by a toponym, was used literally or fictitiously in a given historical corpus of legal casenotes. For example, a landlocked city being named and referred to as though it was a sea port is a fairly good cue for assuming that the toponym is a disguise. Yet, the interpretation is governed by other conventions, when in a play by Shakeaspeare it is stated that a given scene is set on the sea coast of Bohemia. Further discussion of a situational casuistry for identification (especially individual and personal) along with more formal representations will appear in a companion paper "nissanidentifpirandello", also at the disciplinary meet of AI formalisms and legal applications.

Challenges to Slovakia and Poland health policy decisions: use of investment treaties to claim compensation for reversal of privatisation/liberalisation policies

Investment treaties, and possibly the EU Treaty itself, are being used by multinational companies Penta and Eureko to try and force the Slovak government to pay compensation for reversing health privatisation and liberalisation policies. Similar action has been used against the Polish government by Eureko to win compensation worth nearly 2 billion Euros and a policy commitment to further privatisation.

Descriptions and validation of the names of some high-rank syntaxa in the European Asplenietea trichomanis and Polypodietea

The paper presents the description of one new order (Asplenietalia septentrionalo-cuneifolii) and two new alliances (Arenarion bertolonii and Physoplexido comosae- Saxifragion petraeae). In addition, the syntaxon Asplenietalia lanceolato-obovati is here formally raised to the order level and the name Hypno-Polypodietalia vulgaris is validated.

The emigration of the czechoslovak inhabitants in the languaje of the communist propaganda

The contribution is explaining the methods and the forms of the undemocratic regime on the example of the communist propaganda in the field of the emigration. The task of the article is to find out how the communist political elite was looking at the people who illegally left the territory of Czechoslovakia, which means of expression it was taking advantage of the characterizing of the political refugees, which types of the emigrants were standing in the centre of attention of the negative propaganda and in which intensity, the emigrants were presented in the communist press. We assume from the hypothesis that the propaganda language of the communists directed against the emigrants did not change in dependence of the rigidity of the communist regime. So, the emigrants were considered to be the mortal enemies of the regime both in the totalitarian condition in the fifties and in the authoritarian period of the eighties. The text is processed in the form of the contents analysis of the period newspaper articles. The article is divided into four parts. In the first theoretical part, the role of the propaganda in the undemocratic regimes is presented. Subsequently, the reasons of the emigration are explained in the investigated period, the object of the communist propaganda is subsequently presented and ultimately, in the last theoretical part, the language level of the propaganda of the Communist Party is analysed.

A tale of two childhoods : the virtual child and the real child in Romania, 1970s and 1980s

This thesis deals with the everyday use of propaganda in Romania, between 1971 and 1989. It explores the way in which the propaganda discourse of the Romanian Communist Party was disseminated through popular culture artifacts targeting children: Pioneers' magazines, textbooks, Almanacs and moralizing stories. These artifacts configured the image of a model child, whose preoccupations complied with the requirements of the Romanian Communist Party and communicated a set of recommended practices, to be followed by Romanian children. At the same time, the thesis incorporates the response of the actual children to these desirable practices, and implicitly, their response to state propaganda.

La cooperación cultural como herramienta para la reafirmación identitaria en el Grupo Visegrád y sus efectos en el posicionamiento del mismo dentro de la Unión Europea 2004-2012

El Grupo Visegrád es un escenario de cooperación multilateral, conformado por Polonia, República Checa, Eslovaquia y Hungría, el cual tiene como objetivo principal contribuir al cumplimiento de los intereses de dichos países, por medio de la financiación de proyectos culturales. El interés de esta monografía consiste en determinar la incidencia de la cooperación cultural en la reafirmación identitaria de cada uno de los miembros del Grupo y, por ende, en la manera como éstos se proyectan dentro de la Unión Europea. Así pues, se identifican los principales hechos históricos que han moldeado los intereses de los países del V4 y que condujeron a la creación de una estructura institucional sólida, que ha servido como plataforma para el accionar de dichos países dentro del bloque europeo. Se utiliza la perspectiva constructivista de Alexander Wendt, la cual permite entender la naturaleza de la cooperación y, su relación con las identidades y los intereses de los Estados.

Perfil de resistencia microbiológico en ciudados intensivos adultos en la fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá año 2014

Se realizó un estudio descriptivo, retrospectivo; se usó la base de datos de los aislamientos microbiológicos documentados en las UCI de la Fundación Santa fe de Bogotá para el año 2014. La prevalencia de bacterias resistentes en los aislamientos de la FSFB no es baja, por lo que se requiere una terapia empírica acertada acorde con la flora local. Se requieren estudios analíticos para evaluar factores asociados al desarrollo de gérmenes multi resistentes y mortalidad por sepsis